Jeff, lists,
Peirce was using not his own trichotomical principles, but Comte's
ordering principle, to /guide/ his classification of the sciences as
living pursuits by actual groups of people. He was also looking for
embodiments of his trichotomical principles in actual divisions of the
sciences that he surveyed. The physical-psychical case seems the biggest
case in which he didn't find those principles embodied even though the
classificational level was sufficiently broad that one would think that
the classificational divisions would be more logical than genealogical.
(Genealogical divisions such as the study of vertebrates, the study of
molluscs, etc.) He didn't find what I strongly suspect he was looking
for, but he didn't try to fudge the data - which is why I say that the
trichotomies were not his _/guide/_ in the classifications. What's more,
the division into physical (efficient-causal) and psychical
(final-causal) seems nowhere near as rooted in natural history as, say,
the prokaryote-eukaryote distinction. Instead it seems quite like a
Peircean trichotomy with a missing department. Why didn't Peirce
classify biology as a department neither physical nor psychical? In his
"Detailed Classification of the Sciences" written for _Minute Logic_
(1902), he regards biology largely as chemistry, though a very special
kind of chemistry, see CP 1.261 http://www.textlog.de/4257.html . In the
"Syallabus" Outline Classification (1903) he makes similar, though
briefer remarks, see CP 1.195 http://www.textlog.de/4257.html .
Two considerations especially would lead one to expect from Peirce a
trichotomy of idioscopic fields: the tyche-anance-agape trichtomy, and
the fact that both of the other two highest departments of discovery
science are divided into three.
(Pure) mathematics: 3: (1. maths of logic, 2. discrete maths, 3,
continuous and pseudo-continuous maths)
Cenoscopy: 3: (1. phaneroscopy, 2. normative sciences, 3. metaphysics)
Idioscopy: 2: (1. or 2. physical sciences, 2. or 1. psychical sciences).
A question for Peirceans today would be:
Can idioscopy as an actual research department, a living discipline, be
fairly trichotomized now in terms of tyche, anance, agape? - i.e.,
absolute chance, efficient causation, and final causation, and three
corresponding modes of evolution of the cosmos and its parts? Would a
physical/chemical - biological - psychical distinction - in some order
or other - accomplish that?
Best, Ben
On 12/8/2014 2:44 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
Ben, Lists,
Given the principles that are being used to guide the formation of the
classification of the sciences, why is the division between the
physical and the physical sciences a dichotomy and not a trichotomy?
If this is a natural divisions between kinds of special sciences, then
there should be an explanation. What is it?
--Jeff
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Benjamin Udell [[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2014 9:32 AM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7705] Peirce's classifications -
WAS Re: Natural Propositions Chapter 6
Dear Tommi, lists,
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